Israel Matzav: Keeping Iran afloat

Keeping Iran afloat

One of the leaders of Europe's drive to keep Iran afloat and
ready for nuclear warfare is Austria.

“In the first eight months of this year, Austrian firms supplied goods and services worth a total of 189 million euros to the Islamic Republic, more than, for example, to Israel, Thailand or Ireland,” the Vienna daily Die Presse reported recently.

Austrian energy giant OMV continues to refuel Iran Air planes, in contrast to many fuel suppliers across Europe.

“While top-ranking British, European politicians are quite vocal about new Iran sanctions, Austria remains silent,” Dr. Diana Gregor, a Vienna-based specialist who has written and lectured on Austrian-Iran relations, wrote to The Jerusalem Post by e-mail on Friday.

“In recent years, Austria has strongly contributed to keeping the Iranian regime from international isolation, and has not taken any steps toward destroying the economic basis of the dictatorship of the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guards,” Gregor wrote.

Yacov Stiassny, from the Israel-based Central Committee for Jews in Austria, told the Post by phone from Bat Yam on Friday, “Yes, it is obvious what they [the government in Vienna] should be doing, but they are not doing it. Business is more important to Austria than its commitment to the Jewish people and Israel. It is a pity.

“Instead of taking care of the Jews who fled Austria, the Austrians are doing business with Iran,” he said.

But why should anyone be surprised at that? This is what went on at OMV's shareholders' meeting in May 2008.

Was the company's investment in Iran a "miscalculation" because of the Islamic Republic's nuclear program and the sanctions imposed for violating United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for the regime to halt enrichment of uranium, asked Dr. Hava Bugajer, an OMV shareholder and president of the Women's International Zionist Organization in Austria.

"The details are to be negotiated" and there is "no foreseeable result" regarding the implementation of the deal, replied CEO Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer to a packed auditorium at the Austrian Center Vienna.

OMV sees time as an ally and is waiting for "political change in the USA," Ruttenstorfer said in response to questions about sanctions against Iran at the stockholder meeting. [Think they're expecting Barack Hussein Obama to be the next President of the United States? CiJ]

He declined to comment on whether OMV's gas deal would violate the US Iran Sanctions Act, which prohibits large energy investments in Iran and spells out penalties for conducting more than $20 million of annual business in Iran's energy sector.

OMV spokesman Thomas Huemer told the The Jerusalem Post that "OMV as a company does not have a moral responsibility toward a particular state."

Bugajer told thePost that Ruttenstorfer' responses were "not really answers."

The problem, as I described at length in that post, is that the Austrians see themselves as victims of the Nazis, when in fact Hitler sprung from among the Austrians and much of the hierarchy of the World War II German army came from Austria. The Austrians feel no sympathy and no empathy for Israel or Jews. And don't expect that to change.

Israel Matzav: Keeping Iran afloat

Love of the Land: Iranian Nukes: A Boxer Doesn't Need a Gun If His Opponent Is Too Afraid To Punch Back

Iranian Nukes: A Boxer Doesn't Need a Gun If His Opponent Is Too Afraid To Punch Back

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
08 May '10

Would the Iranian government hand nuclear weapons to a terrorist group or fire off nuclear-tipped missiles itself?

It is easy for many experts and “experts” to answer this question ”No.” Their reasoning is that Iran has proven itself cautious historically and knows it would be held responsible and punished for doing so. The responder could add that the Islamic regime has not been adventurous or crazy in its actual policy (as opposed to its words) during the last thirty years.

I’d agree with that response as far as it goes. But it misses some very key points that might end up getting a huge number of people killed.

Iran has not been adventurous or crazy in the manner that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was in 1979 and 1990, that is, Iran has not sent its military forces across the border to invade another country. Instead, Tehran has used subversion as its technique, backing and helping groups undermining other countries with terrorist attacks and a longer-term attempt to build a popular base in order to seize state power.

Thus, to say that Iran has not attacked a neighbor with conventional military forces is quite true, yet this may not tell us how Iran will behave regarding terrorist groups. Moreover, a nuclear-armed Iran may feel a little more confident than the pre-nuclear version.

Having said that I would correct the original response to be this: Iran will probably neither give nuclear weapons to terrorist groups nor fire them at Israel or anyone else.

Probably means that the odds are higher—let’s say far higher—than 50 percent that they won’t do so. The problem here is that even if there is a 10, 20. pr 30 percent chance of that happening, that’s not the kind of risk one wants to take.

But there are other, even more likely, scenarios that are never discussed but are quite important. Here are the two I think most important:

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Love of the Land: Iranian Nukes: A Boxer Doesn't Need a Gun If His Opponent Is Too Afraid To Punch Back

Love of the Land: Mullen's Myth of Geostrategic Equivalence

Mullen's Myth of Geostrategic Equivalence

On Iran's nuclear program.


William Kristol
The Weekly Standard
19 April '10

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen told a forum at Columbia University yesterday, "Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing. Attacking them would also create the same kind of outcome...In an area that's so unstable right now, we just don't need more of that."

But Mullen's formulation of geostrategic equivalance ignores a massive difference between the two outcomes: Even assuming the degree and kind of "destabilization" would be the same in both the cases of attack and appeasement (which I don't think would be so), one scenario--attack--leaves Iran without nuclear weapons, at least for now; the other--appeasement--means Iran would have nuclear weapons going forward. Which unstable outcome is less damaging to U.S. interests? I think the answer is pretty clear: An attacked Iran that does not have nukes.

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Love of the Land: Mullen's Myth of Geostrategic Equivalence

Love of the Land: Lessons of the Holocaust

Lessons of the Holocaust

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
27 Nissan, 5770
11 April '10

Translated from the NRG website

I am very ashamed of the Holocaust. How my people were taken, stripped, humiliated, tortured and led to their deaths - before the eyes of the joyous Poles, Ukrainians, French and other offspring of Christian enlightenment; how newborn babies were impaled on pitchforks on the way to the death pits; how millions were led to the factories of death, and suffocated and burned, fertilizing the fields of Poland and Europe with our people’s ashes - with almost no resistance.

I am very proud of the Holocaust. If the German Asmodeus - the most explicit essence of absolute evil ever revealed in history - sees me, the Jew, as its ultimate enemy, then that means that I am on the other end of the scale. In other words, there is something very good about my people. If the German Asmodeus represents absolute evil, then it is very afraid of the absolute good - G-d - that I represent.

There is no way to explain the Holocaust. I know survivors who are not on speaking terms with G-d. I know many who are the opposite. I have no right to go there – and I have neither the ability nor the desire to do so. But irrespective of the theological questions surrounding the Holocaust, one thing clearly occurred in its wake: Jewish history stopped being written in exile and started to be written in the Land of Israel.

Very soon, for the first time since the First Temple period (!), the majority of the Jewish People will be living in the Holy Land. This fact constitutes a spiritual critical mass. Jewish law changes in several realms by virtue of the demographic fact that “most of its sons are on [the land].” The absolute number that we are approaching in the Land of Israel is chilling. Six million.

G-d, Who chose us to be His eternal people and to attest to His existence, has made us a target for extermination by every evil in the world. It is certainly understandable why there are Jews who constantly try to escape this fate. As individuals, this may be possible – an individual may be able to assimilate and rid him/herself of this trouble. But as a people, we cannot escape our destiny. We cannot exist without it.

When the time of national awakening comes, when the gates of the Land open before us but we insist on remaining merely the bearers of religion in exile - the ground burns under our feet. And when we flee to the other extreme, create an alternative Israeli nationalism and shun Judaism and the Torah, then even if we have decided that we are no longer Jews, but only normal Israelis, even if we have established a modern state and hold 200 atom bombs in our nuclear arsenal - we are still six million Jews under the mounting danger of annihilation.

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Love of the Land: Lessons of the Holocaust